Forum Post: The marriage between capitalism and democracy is over; the 99% want a divorce!
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 30, 2011, 11:24 a.m. EST by jeivers
(278)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
The marriage between capitalism and democracy is over; the 99% want a divorce! Banks do not lend money. They simply create it from debt! In other words, if there was no debt, there would be no money! Our current financial system is dependent on us being in debt to bankers. Time for a new a new system!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Dc3sKwwAaCU
Do you know how it started?
The libertarians are wrong
The anarchists are wrong
It is not the evil of wall street
It is not the evil of corporations
It is not the evil of government
It is not the evil of republicans
It is not the evil of democrats
It is the evil of GREED - the government controlled by the corporations,
and the republican and democratic co-conspirators –
AND WE, THE PEOPLE WHO LET IT HAPPEN
Here’s how it started – or you wouldn’t be here – would you?
The Real History of 'Corporate Personhood': By Jeffrey Clements { slightly edited }
In 1971, Lewis Powell, a mild-mannered, courtly, and shrewd corporate lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, soon to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court, wrote a memorandum to his client, the United States Chamber of Commerce. He outlined a critique and a plan that changed America - “Attack on American Free Enterprise System.” He explained, “No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack.. Corporations must organize and fund a drive to achieve political power through “united action.”
Powell emphasized the need for a sustained, multiyear corporate campaign to use an “activist-minded Supreme Court” to shape “social, economic and political change” to the advantage of corporations.
The story of Powell and the cigarette corporations and their response to public efforts to address addiction, smoking, and health is a big piece of the larger story of how corporate rights took such significant pieces of the Constitution and American democracy. As a director and an executive committee member of Philip Morris, Powell shared responsibility for the fraudulent attack on the conclusions of scientists and the surgeon general by the cigarette industry and for its false insistence for years that “no proof” showed cigarettes to be unhealthy. In one case in the late 1960s, Powell argued that any suggestion that cigarettes caused cancer and death was “not proved” and was “controversial.” Therefore, according to Powell, the Federal Communications Commission wrongly violated the First Amendment rights of cigarette corporations by refusing to require “equal time” for the corporations to respond to any announcement that discouraged cigarette smoking as a health hazard.
Powell helped shape a new court majority to serve the interest of corporations, but for years, the most vigorous dissents came from the conservative Justice William Rehnquist - in the fundamental proposition that our Bill of Rights sets out the rights of human beings, and corporations are not people. Huge corporations, including Powell’s Philip Morris, invested millions of dollars in the Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Litigation Center and many other legal foundations to bring litigation demanding new corporate rights - We should no longer think of corporations as useful but potentially insidious industrial economic tools. We should no longer be concerned that corporations might leverage massive economic power into massive political power or trample the public interest for the profit of the few. Instead, we should think of corporations as pillars of liberty, institutions that Americans can trust. They would protect our freedom for us. They would stand up to “bad” government for us.
The first major victory for the corporate rights advocates came in 1978, with a corporate attack on a Massachusetts law in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellott.- a lawsuit after the people of Massachusetts banned corporate political spending intended to influence a citizen referendum. Justice Lewis Powell cast the deciding vote and wrote the 5–4 decision wiping off the books the people’s law intended to keep corporate money out of citizen ballot questions. For the first time in American history, corporations had successfully claimed “speech” rights to attack laws regulating corporate money in our elections.
In the 1982 case of Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation v. Public Service Corporation of New York, utility corporations and the array of corporate legal foundations all argued that a New York law prohibiting utility corporations from promoting energy consumption violated the corporations’ rights of free speech. The corporations won again, and again Justice Powell wrote this one of many decisions for the activist Supreme Court that he had imagined in his 1971 Chamber of Commerce memo. The corporate interest in promoting energy consumption for corporate profit trumped the people’s interest in energy conservation - transformed the people’s First Amendment speech freedom into a corporate right to challenge public oversight and corporate regulation.
Washington and many state capitals became playgrounds for corporate lobbyists, and our elected representatives became increasingly disconnected from the will of the people. With the new, organized corporate radicalism, staggering amounts of corporate money flooded Washington and our political system. Between 1998 and 2010, the Chamber of Commerce spent $739 million on lobbying. Pharmaceutical and health care corporations spent more than $2 billion. Three corporations seeking military contracts, Northrop, Lockheed, and Boeing, spent more than $400 million. GE Corporation ($237 million), AT&T ($162 million), the pharmaceutical corporate lobby PHRMA ($195 million), ExxonMobil ($151 million), Verizon ($149 million).
Democracy + Capitalism + Greed – People = America
So what’s next ? Some of us want to tear it down and start over.
If you can view our mess OBJECTIVLY – without anger – and with a serious understanding of history – you will see no perfect people –
but you will see some people in our capitalist system that did good things and
you will see some people in our political system that did good things.
And you will see the bridge of GREED between the two that really does need to be torn down.
There is no SANE path but peace!
Do you believe that we Americans cannot do today what Gandhi did? What MLK did? What Susan B. Anthony did? What Mandella did?
The enemy is not libertarians or anarchists or wall street or corporations or government or republicans or democrats
the enemy is the GREED that WE let drown our nation.
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT ?
Exactly. The 99% needs to look in the mirror. This gov is a perfect representation of them.
Need to get the money out of politics.
http://www.getmoneyout.com/
http://movetoamend.org/
We can continue,
Overturning Citizens United !!!
Ending Corporate Personhood !!!
83% of Americans already agree on it
as stated in the ABC/Washington Post poll
In the the PFAW Poll -
Wanna take your family on vacation?
Convince the 7 year old and the 10 year old to go to Mt Rushmore.
Then try to convince them to go to Disneyland.
Prioritizing this goal will introduce us to the world – not as a bunch of hippie radical anarchist socialist commie rabblerousers – but as a responsible, mature movement that is fighting for what America wants.
IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO ACT ----> JOIN US TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
I feel that using the tactics of the NRA, the AARP an the TP – who all represent a minority – who have successfully used their voting power to achieve their minority goals - plus the Prohibition Amendment tactics – bringing all sides together - is a straight path for us to success that cannot fail to enable us to create and complete one task the MAJORITY.
Join the OWS Restore Democracy Working Group at
http://www.nycga.net/groups/restore-democracy
regular meetings 6-8PM @ 60 Wall St – The Attrium @ Wednesdays
Plan details with supporting documentation at:.... http://bit.ly/vK2pGI
IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO ACT ----> JOIN US TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
TO END CORPORATE PERSONHOOD
Whereas --
The OWS Declaration of the Occupation of New York City states that
"a democratic government derives its just power from the people,
not from corporations."
and --
the ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 83% of the entire US population
opposes the Supreme Court Citizens United decision,
which affirmed that corporations are people.
and --
by supporting the overturning of corporate personhood,
OWS clearly aligns itself with the vast majority of the American people
who support ending the fundamentally flawed and anti-democratic concept
that corporations are people.
therefore --
We support a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood.
WILL YOU JOIN US ?
I support this keep it going:
http://movetoamend.org/
http://www.getmoneyout.com/
there never was a marriage - Personally I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions in the society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.
Capitalism is not the problem. Capitalism is a fact of nature. Any other economic "ism" will revert to capitalism. The goal we should seek is to ensure the Rights of individuals and the preservation of the common welfare in the context of an ownership based economy.
The failure of our current system is not due to the nature of ownership of the means of production. It is due to malice on the part of certain individuals who conspire in malevolent practices to abuse and defraud the honest participants.
These are people who (evidence might indicate) tore a page from Mein Kampf regarding the Big Lie, and are using it as their playbook.
let's see - we have been around for 250k years (H. sapiens have lived from about 250,000 years ago to the present.) and capitalism started 500 years ago so your thought (i am being generous here) that it is a fact of nature is a bit of a stretch, no?
Money changers in the temple? It's just a story to me, but it sure goes back more than 500 years. The term capitalism was coined more recently than 500 years. What has changed in the past 500 years is increased industrialization, automation, mobility of good and people, instantaneous global communication, accelerated exponential population growth, and the dominance of fractional reserve banking controlled by private central banks. And this latter is the biggest economic problem we face.
you are free to use any term you like, of course, but if you want to be understood by others we have to use terms in a way they were intended. if you want to think capitalism is as old as the bible go ahead - if you want to think trade under feudalism was capitalism that is ok also, but then it will be hard to have a real conversation. private banks are a real problem but don't go to the ron paul lunatic fringe with the fractional reserve lending nonsense - read graeber then come back to the debate. here is one history of capitalism ..... The history of capitalism can be traced back to early forms of merchant capitalism practiced in Western Europe during the Middle Ages,[1] though many economic historians consider the Netherlands as the first thoroughly capitalist country. In Early modern Europe it featured the wealthiest trading city (Amsterdam) and the first full-time stock exchange. The inventiveness of the traders led to insurance and retirement funds as well along with much less benign phenomena such as the boom-bust cycle, the world's first asset-inflation bubble, the tulip mania of 1636–1637, and according to Murray Sayle, the world's first bear raider – Isaac le Maire, who in 1607 forced prices down by dumping stock and then buying it back at a discount.[2]
Over the course of the past five hundred years, capital has been accumulated by a variety of different methods, in a variety of scales, and associated with a great deal of variation in the concentration of economic power and wealth.[3] Much of the history of the past five hundred years is concerned with the development of capitalism in its various forms, its condemnation and rejection, particularly by socialists, and its defense, mainly by conservatives and libertarians.
Collective ownership concentrates control of the means of production in much the same way as individual ownership. If you think getting rid of "capitalism", no matter how you want to define it, is going to abolish greed, you really don't understand human nature.
For a study in collective ownership, see SAIC.
From Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein (May 1949)
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of the smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
From a 1940 speech by Adolf Hitler
The decisive question is who enlightens the people, who educates them? In those countries, it is actually capital that rules; that is, nothing more than a clique of a few hundred men who possess untold wealth and, as a consequence of the peculiar structure of their national life, are more or less independent and free. They say: 'Here we have liberty.' By this they mean, above all, an uncontrolled economy, and by an uncontrolled economy, the freedom not only to acquire capital but to make absolutely free use of it. That means freedom from national control or control by the people both in the acquisition of capital and in its employment. This is really what they mean when they speak of liberty. These capitalists create their own press and then speak of the 'freedom of the press.' In reality, every one of the newspapers has a master, and in every case this master is the capitalist, the owner. This master, not the editor, is the one who directs the policy of the paper. If the editor tries to write other than what suits the master, he is ousted the next day. This press, which is the absolutely submissive and characterless slave of the owners, molds public opinion. Public opinion thus mobilized by them is, in its turn, split up into political parties. The difference between these parties is as small as it formerly was in Germany.
are you responding to what i said??? with a speech from hitler?? i thought the question was how long capitalism has been around - do you have me confused with someone else or am i just confused? this is what i was responding to - it sure goes back more than 500 years. The term capitalism was coined more recently than 500 years. - what were you responding to? as to socialism here --The terminology of political and social discourse is vague and imprecise, and constantly debased by the contributions of ideologists of one or another stripe. Still, these terms have at least some residue of meaning. Since its origins, socialism has meant the liberation of working people from exploitation. As the Marxist theoretician Anton Pannekoek observed, "this goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie," but can only be "realized by the workers themselves being master over production." Mastery over production by the producers is the essence of socialism, and means to achieve this end have regularly been devised in periods of revolutionary struggle, against the bitter opposition of the traditional ruling classes and the 'revolutionary intellectuals' guided by the common principles of Leninism and Western managerialism, as adapted to changing circumstances. But the essential element of the socialist ideal remains: to convert the means of production into the property of freely associated producers and thus the social property of people who have liberated themselves from exploitation by their master, as a fundamental step towards a broader realm of human freedom.
History does repeat itself. And didn't you read the latest National Geographic? It showed Dolphins exchanging shells to pass certain land areas and the Rhesus monkeys using empty coconut shells while they sat around playing some game they invented, smoking rolled up leaves of sorts its all natural!
Scarcity ethology is a revealing area of study. It corresponds with the definition of economics as "the science of scarcity".
Pure silliness.
Even the barter-based communities of the San Francisco discovered that their system didn't work well when all all trade was bilateral; If you were a plumber but needed some electrical work, you had to find an electrician who needed some plumbing work. The community then introduced a new concept called 'points' whereby one could earn some points by doing plumbing work for one person then expend those points to buy electrical services from another. With their point system, the community created 'money.'
'Money' is simply a token we use to facilitate commerce. It has no intrinsic value in and of itself. The number of tokens in circulation must always be equal to or greater than the volume of goods and services exchanged in commerce. When the supply of tokens in circulation falls below the volume of goods and services, commerce is throttled. When the number of tokens exceeds the volume of goods and services, it simply takes more tokens to complete and exchange, but the tokens themselves do not in any way change the value if the goods and services exchanged.
Most people live 'pay-check-to-paycheck,' so they have little interest in the temporal value (changing value over time) of their tokens in the marketplace. Insofar as they receive a proportionate increase in the number of tokens they receive for the goods and services they sell, it makes no difference that they expend more tokens for the goods and services they buy.
Bankers care very much about the temporal value of the tokens. They lend us tokens worth a certain volume of goods and services, and they expect the tokens they receive in payment a few years later will buy as many or hopefully more goods and services than those they lent. When the number of tokens required to buy a number of goods and services increases between the time of the loan and it's repayment, they suffer a loss of net value held.
The rich always seek parity or a net decrease in the ratio of tokens to goods and services over time because it enriches them. People in debt always seek a net increase in the ratio of tokens to goods and services because they can pay their debt off by selling fewer goods and services.
Moving back to traditional terms...
When the supply of tokens decreases relative to the goods and services, we suffer deflation; prices fall and those who hold debt instruments or stockpiles of cash benefit greatly simply because their money has increased in value. If, however, the money supply falls too far either because we print less and/or the rich hold too much unproductive (unspent) money, there is too insufficient money to sustain commerce.
When the money supply grows faster than the goods and services produced, we have inflation; prices rise and those who hold debt instruments or stockpiles of cash suffer greatly simply because their money has decreased in value. If the money supply grows too fast, people rush from work to cash their checks and buy their groceries, and all savings/investment stops.
Monetary policy generally seeks to keep us operating in the middle ground between deflation and hyper-inflation. We accomplish this by manipulating the leveraging ratio inherent to the banking system. Some countries, like China, do this directly by changing bank reserve requirements. The USA tends to do it by manipulating the cost of borrowing funds needed to meet a fixed reserve requirement at the Fed's window. If thee is insufficient demand for debt, this tactic doesn't work, so we buy some debt just to inject more currency into the economy.
Because the levers on the economy are related to manipulating the leveraging ratios of the banks, they banks normally hold more liabilities in the form of deposits than they hold assets in the form of loans. If a large number of people demand their deposits, the bank has to come up with large amounts of cash immediately, yet their loan portfolio is, by definition, not all that liquid. While the bank may be perfectly sound over the longer term, it simply has a short term liquidity problem, so we inject liquidity to prevent panic by lending them cash out of a pool of reserves each bank maintains at the Fed. If many banks suffer a liquidity crisis, the Fed creates the money needed by buying debt instruments. Remember, the problem is a short-term gap between demand deposits and long term loan assets and the banks are healthy over the longer term so, over time, they are able to repay the "bail-out" as loan repayments come in.
At present, America is in debt at the personal, local, state, federal, and international level. If this debt were denominated in gold, for example, there would be none left to support commerce and the economy would collapse. Thankfully, we have an elastic money supply, so we can take money from the hoards accumulated by our debt holders by printing more money and putting it into circulation. This not only allows debt to be repaid using money that's worth less than it was when borrowed, it also reduces the apparent cost of our exports on the international markets. Inflation, insofar as it's not hyper-inflation is the best friend of the American people until such time as they emerge from debt. As we retire debt, we will find more and more money freed up to purchase goods and services, and inflationary pressures will mount. At this time, we will start deleveraging the money supply, retire the debt instruments on the Fed's balance sheet, and increase the cost of borrowing money to bring the money supply back in line with the goods and services produced and consumed.
In summary, the think we call 'money' is just a token with no intrinsic value that services to facilitate multi-lateral commerce, and even barter societies have seen the need for it in the form of 'points.' When the rich accumulate too many tokens, there are not enough left to support commerce in the broader economy, so we print more tokens. When we print too many too fast, however, people have to rush out and spend their paychecks and stop putting money into savings and investments (which foster production and security). Monetary policy serves to regulate the money supply in order to keep the economy in balance. The primary tool of monetary policy used under normal conditions is the debt leverage ratio. People shouldn't be so scared by the use of debt leverage ratios to manage the money supply, it's simply a tool. What people should watch is the inflation rate. When we are in debt, inflation is good because it allows us to pay off our debts with 'cheap' money and shifts the balance of imports and exports in our favor. Once we are out of debt, we desire an inflation rate directly correlated to the growth of commerce.
[Removed]
Well it looks like another depression and then a massive populist backlash!
good luck - what's stopping you ?
99% of the U.S. population?
Why are you here if you don't even understand the meaning of a successful rhetorical device when you see one?
I don't want a divorce. I like the system so I was just trying to figure it out.
[Removed]
“Corporations are NOT people! Money is NOT Speech!”
http://movetoamend.org/occupythecourts
Is organized labor people?
can you respond to this in an intelligent manner? Personally I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions in the society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.
yada yada yada - so you are for the union lobby & against corporate lobbyists. kind of one sided
you need to reread that - where was the union reference?? i know you can do better - yada yada yada - is that what you think is intelligent?
organized labor is 100% American unlike International Corporations!
Some might argue organized labor is completely unconstitutional lol! But ok - if you want the right to collectively bargain you cant then deny companies the right to act in the same manner. you cant have it both ways. If you want to get rid of corporate lobbying then you have to get rid of union lobbying as well.
No foreign lobbying which includes all international corporations. Unions are 100% American, International Corporations are not 100% American and have no loyalty to America just their bottom line!
some might argue the communist occupiers have no loyalty to America
[Removed]
Most of the countries, of the west anyway are broke due to massive social programs, and in the case of the U.S. and former soviet union, large militaries. These programs are never paid for as we go, but rather, money is borrowed to pay for it, because the politicians live in fear of revolt when taxes are raised to quickly. So it is the frog in the pan on the stove syndrome. When the public is finally aware of the scam, policy is so entrenched, and people so dependent on "free" this or that, the system is propped up, and propped up. The house of cards is set to fall, on a world scale. Nothing can or will stop it, except for the man on horseback. Someone will come up with a plan. I believe this person will bring us into a one world economic system, with a level currency of trade.
US is not broke because of massive social programs!
how about Greece? why are they broke?
Wall st. shenanigans...
LOL!
Funny but true...
Re. Greece, please try a) below & then b-e ;-) :
a) http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/debtocracy/ ;
b) http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/category/economics/ ;
c) http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-broke/ ;
d) http://documentarystorm.com/inside-job/ &
e) http://www.opensecrets.org/ .
fiat lux ...
so you cant tell me in your own words in two or three sentences. resort to some streaming propaganda link. Sheep or drone - take your pick of how you should be identified lol!
I can but I won't, "Nutley, from Aries, NJ" because ...
I've seen your posts and all I'll get from you is unrewarding, asinine and ignorant twaddle. You asked about Greece and I gave you a very good link and 4 others to boot, but your graceless, witless and thankless (x) could only come back with the post above !!! Graceless, Witless and Thankless ...
Quad Erat Desmonstrandum ...
right - you gave me a link instead of taking the time to tell me in your own words. That tells me you cant think for yourself
Hmmm ... I am a Robot For LOVE !!! Happy 2012 !! tempus fugit ! <3 + ~*~ = ~{:-) + ~{~ x
ps : in case you haven't yet seen it : http://documentarystorm.com/inside-job/ ;-)
Happy 2O|2 ...~~*
Its broke because the 535 retards that pass law, are chickens shits to pay as we go. If they raised taxes in accordance with spending, their would be no problem.